memory

Multi Store Model AO1

Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed the multi store model this is one explanation of how the memory works.

It is said to have three stores, sensory, short term, and long term.

Firstly information is picked up in the sensory store through the senses hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch.

If attention is given to such information it will pass to short term memory.

This has a capacity of 7 +/- 2 digits or chunks which can last there for a duration of 18-30 seconds.

This information can be displaced if more passes through to the short term memory during this time.

If the information from short term is rehearsed elaborately it will pass to the long term memory store where the capacity is unlimited and the duration can last a lifetime.

If not it will decay and be lost.

If information is only given a maintenance rehearsal it may stay in the short term memory and not get transferred into long term, information is encoded in short term memory acoustically and in long term memory this is done semantically.

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Working Memory Model AO1

Baddeley and Hitch (1974) designed the working memory model as they believed STM in the multi-store model was too simple and they believed the STM could do different things.

The Working Memory Model has a central executive and three slave systems.

The central executive directs attention to particular tasks and decides how the slave systems should be used, it uses information from the senses or LTM. It has a limited capacity.

One of the slave systems is the phonological loop which deals with auditory information and preserves the order of information.

The Phonological loop is spilt into two parts which are called the phonological store (the inner ear which holds the words you hear) and the articulatory process (which is like an inner voice- deals with words that are heard or seen).

Another slave system is the visuospatial sketchpad which stores visual and spatial information.

Visual information is what things look like, and spatial information is the relationship between things.

Logie suggested that the visuo spatial sketchpad can be divided into the visual cache (store) and inner scribe which deals with spatial information.

The final slave system is the episodic buffer which was added by Baddeley as he realised the model needed a general store that integrates information from the central executive the phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad and also from LTM.

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EWT and Misleading Information AO1

Loftus and Palmer The aim of their experiment was to see the effect of misleading information on an eyewitnesses ‘immediate recall.

45 students were shown 7 different films of different traffic accidents. After each film the participants were given a questionnaire which asked them to describe the accident then answer questions.

There was one critical question which was ‘About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?’ One group were given this question, the other fiver were given the verbs smashed 40.8, collided 39.3, bumped 38.1 or contacted 31.8 in place of the word hit 34.0.

In conclusion the more violent the verb the higher the participant’s estimate of the speed. This shows that misleading information does have an effect on the eyewitnesses’ immediate recall.

Experiment 2: A new set of participants were used and put into three groups and shown a film of a car accident lasing one minute.Group 1 were given the verb smashed, group 2 were given the verb hit and group 3 (control group) did not have any question about the speed of the vehicles

The participants were asked to return one week later and asked a series of ten questions about the accident, including another critical question ‘did you see any broken glass?’ There was no broken glass in the film but presumably, those who thought the car was travelling faster might expect that there would be broken glass.Participants gave higher speed estimates in the “smashed” condition as before. They also were more likely to think that they saw broken glass, therefore this suggests that misleading post-event information does change the way information is stored.

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EWT and Anxiety AO1

There is evidence that shows anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of a person EWT.

From a review of 21 studies, Deffenbacher carried out a meta-analysis of 18 studies published between 1974 + 1997He look at the effect of heightened anxiety on accuracy of eye witness recall from these studies.

From these studies he found that there was a considerable support the hypothesis that high levels of stress negatively impacted on the accuracy of eye witness testimony.

However some studies have found that emotional arousal may actually enhance the accuracy of memory.Christianson and Hubinettefound than when they questioned 58 real witnesses who had been threatened in a bank robbery.

They found that they were more accurate in their recall and remembered more details and this continued to be true even 15 months later.

Furthermore loftus et al investigated the weapon effect using two conditions.One of the conditions included a weapon and in the other did not.In both conditions the participants heard a discussion in an adjoining room.

In condition 1 a man emerged holding a pen with grease on this hands.In condition w a man emerged holding a paper knife covered in blood.

When asked to identify the man from 50 photos condition 1 were 49% accurate compared to condition 2 which were 33% accurate.

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EWT and Age AO1

Parker and Carranza compared primary school children and college students in their ability to correctly identify a target individual following a slide sequence of a mock crime.

In a photo identification, child witnesses had a higher rate of choosing than adult witnesses.

Although they were also more likely to make errors of identification than the college students.

Furthermore Yarmey conducted an experiment in order to evaluate the accuracies of a person’s recall with regards to their age.

Yarmeys stopped 651 adults in public places and asked them to recall the physical characteristics of a you8ng women who they spoke to for 15 seconds 2 minutes earlier.

Although young (18-29) and middle aged (30-44) adults were more confident in their recall than the older adults (45-65) there was no significant difference in the accuracy of the recall that could be attributed to the age group of the witness

He found that the delay between incident and identification was short (35 minutes) there was no significant difference in the accuracy.

However when the identification time was delayed by a week there was a significant difference as the older people were less accurate.

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Cognitive Interview AO1

Fisher and Geiselman proposed the cognitive interview in order to extract information from witnesses.

The cognitive interview has 4 stages to it:

Report everything- The interviewer encourages the reporting of every event though it may seem irrelevant.

Mental reinstatement of original context- The interviewer encourages the interviewees to mentally recall the environment and contacts from the original incident.

Changing the order- The interviewer may try alternative ways through the timeline of the incident.

Changing the perspective- The interviewee is asked to recall the incident from different angles, e.g. imagining how it might have appeared to other witnesses.

Techniques 1 and 2 aim to increase the consistency between the actual event and the recreated situated. This should lead to an increased likeliness that witnesses will recall more details and will be more accurate in their recall.

Techniques 3 and 4 aim to vary the route through memory in order to increase accuracy of recall. This is successful because such methods of recall remove the effects of ‘scripts’- memory for routine activities.

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Memory Improvement Strategies AO1

Memory improvement strategies or mnemonics are in place to increase the ability of an individual’s memory capability.

Two different methods of memory improvement strategies: verbal and visual.

Verbal

An Acronym – This involves constructing a word(s) to represent the first letter of each word to be remembered

An acrostic – Where a sentence is constructed out of each of the first letters

Rhymes – Encoding information with a tune enhances recall – thinking of the tune brings the words into memory.

Chunking – Capacity of memory is increased by grouping items. This is a form of organisation, for example phone numbers and postcodes.

Visual

Method of loci – The learner associates materials to be learned with different locations.

Keyword method – This is used when trying to associate two pieces of information. For example when learning a foreign language and wanting to remember a foreign word and its English equivalent.

Mind maps – The main topic is placed in the centre and then branching links are made producing a unique visual appearance.